NORTH SHORE BOOK NOTES: 'Humans of New York'

Wednesday

Dec 4, 2013 at 12:01 AMDec 4, 2013 at 4:22 AM

Laid off from his job as a bond trader in Chicago in 2010, Brandon Stanton quickly moved on to his next favorite thing — photography. He had already been taking pictures, obsessively, he says, on weekends. What Stanton offers is an entertaining, heartfelt look at the unabashed way, from birth, that people express something unique about themselves

Rae Padilla Francoeur

“Humans of New York” By Brandon Stanton. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2013. $29.99

Brandon Stanton has been making the radio talk show rounds recently, conversing about his popular Tumblr blog, “Humans of New York,” and, now, his new book of the same name.

Laid off from his job as a bond trader in Chicago in 2010, he quickly moved on to his next favorite thing — photography. He had already been taking pictures, obsessively, he says, on weekends. He expanded his mission after losing his job and upped the ante. He would take 10,000 photographs of New Yorkers and plot them on an interactive map. But once he got going, he found that his interviews with people and his desire to include captions or small stories with the photographs more compelling than merely reaching a quantitative goal. Thus, the absorbing blog and book.

Living part-time in NYC myself, I like to note and even document the many reasons residents are so passionate about this city. I am always looking for more than the standard answer: “It’s the energy.”

Stanton’s people-centric photographs deliver to us irrefutable evidence of the human spirit that contributes to New York City’s specialness. There’s more to NYC, certainly, than a spirited population. But even with a chain drugstore and a bank on every other corner these days, people haven’t gotten the message to conform in kind.

What Stanton offers is an entertaining, heartfelt look at the unabashed way, from birth, that people express something unique about themselves. What’s even more charming and heartening is that you can find this brave self-expressiveness in 2-year-olds and 99-year-olds. In his work, Stanton has the proof. Whether they mean to or not, people express themselves visually and Stanton gets it. Other NYC photographers come close, such as the staff at Time Out New York that presents a weekly interview with a person on the street. Bill Cunningham captures fashion trends with his camera. But Stanton has a different calling. He matches his spirit with members of the general population and people respond. He takes it deeper.

Stanton has come to a distinctive photographic style. Often, he crouches and shoots up. If he’s doing a portrait, he has a way of getting people to make wide and open-eyed contact. He stays away from gimmicky shots, though one of my favorites is of an Asian young man zipping himself into his girlfriend’s suitcase so she can smuggle him into her dorm room. The suitcase is on its side on the sidewalk and his head, and a big smile, protrude. People are so busy doing what they’re doing.

Stanton may not produce art, but he is creating a digital social document that will serve as a fetching time capsule for when the aliens finally find us. Here they’ll encounter human beings, each incredibly original, caught busily performing some essential activity. Their preoccupations are engaging, important and affecting.

Stanton is a storyteller who relies more on the image than the words. His captions are short but they do add important information. A wildly mustachioed man says: “I’m studying to get a Ph.D in neuroscience, but in my free time I like to perform in burlesque shows.” On the opposite page, you find a photograph of a person on stilts looking like a tree. His headpiece is a dramatic spray of foliage. Stanton writes: “Some days I worry that I won’t find anyone to photograph. Then I turn the corner and see a giant tree man.”

Not everyone is a tree man. But a tree man and a scientist with a mustache that looks like the silver-tipped wings of a snowy egret give everyone permission to let a bit more of themselves out, whatever that might be. This book will do us all some good.

In closing, here’s a quote from a fully realized, colorfully attired, smiling woman on a cobblestone street: “I’ve been a widow for five years now. And I guess I’m worried that men look at how I dress and just don’t ‘get it.’ My late husband ‘got it,’ of course. I’d love to meet someone, but I’m not going to change anything about myself to do it.”

We should have a Brandon Stanton in every community.

Rae Padilla Francoeur’s memoir, “Free Fall: A Late-in-Life Love Affair,” is available online or in some bookstores. Write her at rae.francoeur@verizon.net. Or read her blog at http://www.freefallrae.blogspot.com/ or follow her @RaeAF.